Ocala changes land regulations from 18 categories to 6

The Ocala City Council has voted to change the city's comprehensive plan's Future Land Use Element by reducing the roughly 18 different permitted land use categories to six uses.

By Susan Latham CarrStaff writer

How city of Ocala property owners and their neighbors may develop their land has changed.

The Ocala City Council has voted to change the city’s comprehensive plan’s Future Land Use Element by reducing the roughly 18 different permitted land use categories to six uses. That means property owners and their neighbors may be able to do more with their land than they have in the past.

The Future Land Use element and the accompanying map serve as the blueprint for how property may be developed in the city. The council also approved an ordinance temporarily amending the zoning classifications to coincide with the comprehensive plan’s new land uses.

“This is an interim ordinance,” said Michael Daniels, the city’s planning manager.

The amended zoning changes will be used until development of the new, consolidated zoning categories has been completed. The zoning could limit what can be developed on property within the various land uses.

Daniels said the city worked to ensure that property owners would not lose any property rights.

“The idea is it would allow more flexibility in use,” Daniels said.

Council also approved changes to the Transportation, Recreation and Open Space elements of the state-approved comprehensive plan.

Except for property just east of the Ocala 489 property, also known as Magna, in West Ocala, the council approved staff’s recommended land use changes and the accompanying map. The council voted unanimously to change the strip of land in West Ocala from the Neighborhood land use recommended by staff to a Medium Intensity/Special land use, which allows for more intense and varied development in that area.

Shirley and Don Nelson own a home in that area and they are not pleased with the change.

“It won’t be a family neighborhood any more,” Shirley Nelson said. “I see them forcing us to leave our houses so they can have this property to do whatever they want to put here and have whatever kind of business and industry they want.”

The Ocala 489 property, which is a few blocks west of the Nelson property, is being developed as an industrial park.

Before the change, the Nelsons’ property had a low-density residential land use. The staff recommended it be changed to the new Neighborhood land use.

However, City Councilwoman Suzy Heinbockel said that section appeared out of place with the other land uses, and asked that it be changed to Medium Intensity/Special. All five council members voted for the change.

City Growth Management Director Tye Chighizola said there are 30 parcels of land in the section now changed to Medium Intensity/Special, some with houses on them.

Council President Mary Rich, in whose district the Nelsons live, did not object to the change.

“I think it’s OK,” Rich said.

Under the new Neighborhood land use classification, the primary use allowed is residential, but it can also be used for limited neighborhood-scale office and commercial as well as recreation, institutional and educational facilities.

“It would allow a retail component. The advantage, from the city’s perspective, is that it would allow for additional uses that would enhance the neighborhood and make it where people could walk to a store,” Daniels said. “The goal would be to make sure we preserve those neighborhoods.”

Areas that might be considered for neighborhood commercial uses are Fort King Street, 36th Avenue and 17th Street, Daniels said.

Under the new Medium Intensity/Special district use, which the Nelsons face, the land can be used for light industrial, residential, office, commercial, public, recreational, institutional and educational facilities.

Heinbockel said the people who own homes can stay there.

“When you look at the map, that’s the only area with the Neighborhood designation that was sort of sandwiched between two different uses, and the other neighborhoods throughout the city are more — they are grouped more,” Heinbockel said. “It didn’t make a good transition from one use to another.”

She said zoning can be used to keep industrial uses from encroaching on the homes in the area. But she said the Ocala 489 property (Magna) to the west is going to be a “major job center for the city” and the Future Land use is a plan for 2035.

“And so you ask yourself, in 30 years do we want a strip of residential property sandwiched between what is mixed use and Magna?” Heinbockel said. “We are all hoping that is going to fill up as a job center for the city.”

The city is hoping to concentrate development in the central core — the downtown area — with a mixed use of residential, office, commercial, public, recreation, institutional, light industrial and educational facilities.

City Manager Matthew Brower said the changes were made looking toward 2035.

“We have just increased the value of their property,” Brower said about the Nelsons’ property and that of their neighbors. “Commercial property, historically, is more valuable than residential. That area begs redevelopment,” he said.

That may be, but the Nelsons enjoy the neat, attractive home that they built in 1974 on nearly two acres. They understand they do not own the land around them. They have been outspoken opponents of the expansion of a construction debris and yard waste dump up the road from their property.

“We are just fighting a never-ending battle,” Shirley Nelson said. “We will just have to take it to the Lord.”